


Unspoken (The Poem Unlimited Mix)

by V (deepsix)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Dubious Consent, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-07-07
Updated: 2002-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:34:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepsix/pseuds/V
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unspeakable acts are happening at Malfoy Manor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unspoken (The Poem Unlimited Mix)

**Author's Note:**

> Remix of Snaples's story "Unspoken" (no longer available online).

It is summer, and Draco hates it, because it brings heat, and because it brings quiet—but mostly because it brings Snape.

Things are not as they seem, Draco thinks, because he cannot say it aloud: he cannot say anything under this roof, in this empty, ringing house where he was born, if not precisely raised. Words get him looks from his father, and from the long-dead eyes of the portraits on the walls, and they make Draco conscious of everything that is wrong with his life. Like the fact that:

He is sixteen years old and his father still tucks him into bed.

He is _sixteen_, and his _father_ still tucks him into bed.

After all, he is sixteen, and that is not all his father does.

Snape visits every summer, to keep up appearances. Draco doesn't know who he is trying to fool, because he is just a touch too haughty, a touch too rude, and a man like his father is not easily duped.

Draco knows this, because he has tried it. He has tried, and he has failed, and he has paid for it—and he continues to pay each time that Snape tries. And fails. Snape does not know this, but he is not the only one who has something to hide. Draco knows that Snape thinks he is deceiving _someone_, because he still accepts every invitation to the Manor, and when he arrives, he shakes each Malfoy's hand as if he has never betrayed any of them.

Snape may think so, but Lucius Malfoy is not an idiot.

This time, things will be no different. Snape will arrive on an afternoon in July, precisely six minutes after the prescribed time, because he thinks that by keeping them waiting he is exhibiting power. He is doing nothing of the kind: six minutes later and Draco is still seated in the parlour with his hair carefully combed and sprayed, and his robes still neatly arranged about his knees. His father does not even appear to notice the delay anymore, after so many years of the same bland trick.

"The old are forever waiting on the young," he says sometimes, and in that is an implicit threat. He isn't talking about Snape, Draco doesn't think. "Children like to keep us waiting, because they do not comprehend the value of time."

Draco does not answer.

His mother, too, stays quiet for the full six minutes, as she does the whole rest of the day—as she has done the whole rest of her life. Everything about her is white, even the noise surrounding her. Draco has a theory that if she ever spoke with the white light of day shining on her, her voice would be indistinguishable from the silence.

He has never tested this theory, in particular.

When six minutes have expired, the guest is announced, and his mother starts. Draco pretends he can see neither the apprehension tightening in her knuckles, nor the look his father sends her way. Draco closes his eyes, so he does not need to see a great many things in this house.

But when Snape makes his entrance, Draco can picture it in his mind's eye: Snape in the parlour, with his hand extended and the sleeve of his robes pushed back over his wrist—there is a hint of black in his bloodstream, just as in his father's—"Good afternoon, Draco," Snape will say, in his cold dialectic voice—and Draco will ignore him, and curl his lip—he says it for Snape's ears alone:

_"You fucked my mother."_

And it isn't just in past tense. Snape fucked his mother, and Snape is fucking his mother, and Snape _will_ fuck his mother, and it makes Draco's stomach turn to think about it.

He knows because his father tells him about it, and because he can hear it, when his father is busy breathing down his neck, his hands on Draco's waist, and all Draco wants to do is scream. If he stays quiet, he can hear the violence down the stairs, and the violence in his father's head, and everything is too close, too loud. The shock has long since worn off.

But Draco will never say it, and such a scenario will never happen. Acting on that kind of impulse has long since been forced out of him. Malfoys are not impulsive creatures—or so his father would have him believe.

Instead, Draco says nothing, and opens his eyes to the sudden dankness of the parlour. When Snape gives him his hand, Draco shakes it as requested. He gives the illusion his father asks of him, and he doesn't even meet his father's gaze, for approval in those blank, pale eyes. He does not need to look to know that he hasn't gained a thing.

In the evening, they dine in silence, because that's the way his father likes it-it makes Snape squirm, though he would never show it. Snape puts up as much of a front as Draco does, and Draco can see right through it. It makes him feel as if they have some kind of _bond_—a kind of connection forged through blood and lies and his mother.

He doesn't feel it for very long, though, because the thought rather makes him sick.

Throughout the meal, Draco says not a word, and looks nowhere but at his plate. He can feel Snape looking at his mother and his mother at his father, and his father at him, and he would feel almost preyed-upon, were he not already certain that such was the case.

His father has them crowded at one end of the table, with Snape at the other—a good, long, _safe_ distance from the Malfoy dynasty. It's a symbolic thing, Draco thinks, with no basis in reality: no amount of distance can keep Snape out of their affairs, out of their line, and his father just keeps calling him back.

Draco doesn't know who is the more deceived.

The visit is like a poorly executed dance, because Snape still doesn't know the steps, yet blunders obliviously through the motions. Draco does not even dream of correcting him. He likes to see someone deny his father the kind of perfection he demands.

Draco has never had that kind of courage.

After dinner, he should have exactly one hour and fifteen to fumble together as much composition as he can manage, and rush up the stairs, before his father will follow. He has sipped down his tea and parted graciously from Snape, and while his act should be over for the night, it is not.

Under the cover of darkness, his mother guides him up two flights of stairs and down the hallway, and hums him the songs that should have been of his childhood. She stops at his doorway, because he says, "good night," though they both know that it has not even begun its course.

And that it will not be good, either.

If there is one thing Draco respects about his mother, it is her willingness to give him his privacy. There is not much he respects anymore—not since Snape, and not since he _knew_ that she knew about his father—but here he will give her the benefit of the doubt. He is not entirely sure that she deserves it, but she never crosses the threshold into his suite.

He is perhaps more grateful than respectful for this.

But instead of crossing it himself, Draco sits instead in his father's library, among ghosts of ancestors no better than either of them. It is easier, he thinks, to be accessible than to make his father find him. Only twenty-six minutes have passed when he hears footfalls on the stairs.

Draco snaps closed a book and the door snaps open, and he tries to think of everything he has done to deserve this. He stops after "breathe", because he finds he no longer can.

His father is pulling at him, with his hands beneath Draco's robes, and his mouth is dangerously close to Draco's. Draco doesn't dare turn his head. He can hear his father whispering at him, and he can feel the breath on his lips, but he doesn't want to listen.

He naturally has no choice.

"Do you know," his father is saying, "where your mother is right now." His hand on the small of Draco's back tells him his father is not looking for an answer. His mouth presses distinctly against the curve of Draco's jaw, and Draco tries not to flinch. "Do you know where she is?" his father repeats, as if Draco doesn't.

"No," Draco says.

"Ah," murmurs his father. Draco can feel him fumbling with the laces on his trousers, and Draco thinks: but he gets enough practice. His father is breathing heavily, rasping, against the hollow of Draco's throat.

"She is sleeping"—a pause, and his cool fingers are sliding across Draco's suddenly bare skin—"with the head of your House."

"Isn't that ironic—" Draco wants to say, but doesn't. He has more sense than that, if not enough to keep his father away altogether. He knows where this is going, where it always goes, where this should not go, but he can't stop it. It has already gone too far and he can feel:

The heat of his father pressing against him:

His father's hand in his hair:

His father's hips curved against his:

His father's mouth hovering above his:

The bite of the desk against his spine:

The nausea curling in the pit of his stomach.

And if he doesn't think about it, his mind only wanders, and his father's voice paints images in his subconscious.

_Your mother and Snape, downstairs—she is bleeding—she seduced him, she asked for it, she is a slut—don't you like to think of your professor like that—don't you know these things?—_

Nights like these are the worst, Draco thinks, and even knowing what is coming cannot brace him for all that his father does.

There is a bare breathless moment before his father goes on, and Draco lets his fists unclench themselves. He can hear his mother's deliberate cries, and repeated, violent movements from another floor. He can hear his own heartbeat, and the crack in his father's knuckles as his fingers tighten on Draco's hips.

Sometimes Draco thinks he notices too much.

"Your mother is crying," his father says. His tongue tastes like ashes in Draco's mouth. "She is crying because she is weak. Because she _deserves_ it."

Draco thinks: She is just like me.

The difference is that she wants Snape; but Draco does not want his father. The difference is that she has a choice; but Draco would not choose this. The difference is:

Very likely, she does deserve it.

But he is only sixteen, and he does not deserve any of this.

When it is over, Draco will go back to his room, and force himself not to cry, but he is as weak as Snape, and his mother, and every other Malfoy who has ever dared reach for control. He no longer needs to try to know that he will fail.


End file.
